


Good Things Ahead

by Bakageta



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Baking, Christmas, Christmas Decorating, Christmas Fluff, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's brief and not physical, Mistletoe, Non-Explicit Sex, Other, Trans Character, Trans Eddie Brock, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22051225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: I like the idea of it, Eddie. I want it for us. They would hate it.“They would.” Eddie agrees after awhile, even if he’s thinking of his own they. “And ‘fuck you’ is a good enough reason for me, anyway.”
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 21
Kudos: 225
Collections: Venom Holiday Exchange 2019





	Good Things Ahead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fabulous_but_evil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabulous_but_evil/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy your fic fabulous_but_evil, I had a great time writing it! I would also like to thank [sajastar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajastar/pseuds/sajastar) for betaing!
> 
> This was originally posted to the exchange on 12-31-2019, the date has been changed to the author reveal date.
> 
> I do want to note that the implied/referenced child abuse tag is included for a paragraph following the line “Yeah, I don’t have a lot of good memories of it.” It's not explicit but it does imply misgendering and general extended family related awfulness.

**Eddie, there are more lights now.**

They’re wandering the rainy late November streets by the piers, not hunting this time but burning off energy. If they don’t get out often enough, Eddie’s learned, it’ll all just build and build until their body is stiff and anxious and Eddie does something stupid like punch through a wall. So now they take walks, and the miles and hills pass effortlessly beneath their feet.

Right now Venom is draped over Eddie like some monstrous raincoat/poncho hybrid even though Eddie’s holding an umbrella. Their texture is off, slick and dry at the same time, because they're absorbing any water that falls on them. Usually they’re better at clothes, but it’s late and they’re both lazy even if they’re not tired. They like protecting him even if it’s just from the cold and wet, and Eddie likes being unnoticed, thus the pretense of the umbrella.

**I had wondered if they were fewer, after.**

“The city puts them up every year for Christmas.” Eddie says in response to Venom’s nudging curiosity. “Piers’re more tourist-y so they start here once Union Square’s all done up.” 

He doesn’t say that they hadn’t noticed earlier because they’ve kept mainly to to the interior of the city, or that he’d probably been unconsciously avoiding the lights out of habit. Venom picks up on his half formed thoughts anyway, even if they don’t comment like they would have a year ago.

**Another holiday, Eddie?**

“Yeah, the end of the year is kind of full of them. I figure because it’s cold and wet and miserable.” And here he can’t help flashes of New York: wet snow sticking everywhere that didn’t ice over, more crowds of people than usual, false cheer stuck on faces, either hiding in his room or being locked out until a couple hours after sunset.

“People need something to look forward to when it gets dark, so they’ll celebrate anything.”

**What is this one about?**

“Technically… it’s a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. A season of giving to people who have it harder than you do. Being kind to your fellow man.

“But,” and here he brings up his knowledge of how many Christmas traditions are taken from other traditions, of how far the modern celebration has moved from the original celebration, of how it’s more often become a competition of who’s lights are brighter, who’s gifts are better, who’s party is bigger than providing for the less fortunate, “it’s kind of moved away from that.”

**You do not like it.**

“Yeah, I don’t have a lot of good memories of it.”

Being locked away or shut out. Hiding away with his sister. Being surrounded by relatives who didn’t care about him, only what he hadn’t done. Relatives who didn’t bother to know him, who called him the wrong name, who gave him gifts meant for who they wanted him to be and not who he was. Stifling his words and walking carefully on the shattered glass of his home life lest he cut himself and bleed out in front of everybody.

Eddie heaves a breath through his nose, shoves the past away, and turns towards home.

Venom shifts in the back of his mind, gathering context, and Eddie’s never been more grateful that he doesn’t have to relive memories when Venom experiences them. He’s probably not going to sleep well as it is with the reminder of Carl Brock and his family and all the shit he went through as a kid.

**He cannot hurt us, Eddie. We can do anything we want.**

“Pretty sure we can’t kill a dead man, love.” Eddie says with an amused snort. They’re not even being subtle with the violence backing their thoughts.

**We will not know until we try, Eddie.**

They tighten around his chest and arms, and when he puts the hand not holding the umbrella into a pocket they grip his fingers with clawed ones of their own. Eddie walks back to their apartment with a smile on his face, even when they pass the city workers wrapping more lights around lamp posts.

* * *

**She said holidays, Eddie.**

“Mwhat?” Eddie wakes up lying on his beat up couch, Venom pooled over his chest and stomach and peeking out from the collar of his shirt. Their new-ish apartment is pitch dark except for the screen of his laptop on the floor in front of them. It is paused on some Hallmark movie, presumably a Christmas one judging by the decorations surrounding the cashier frozen in frame.

 **Lynn said** “Happy holidays...!”, **and then that insufferable harpy Karen started yelling about The War On Christmas.**

“...Okay.” The clock at the bottom right of the laptop’s screen reads 3:57 AM and Eddie idly regrets both the 6 dollar a month subscription and the fact that Venom can repeat sounds identically down to the unenthusiastic exclamation point directly into his brain.

**Holidays, Eddie. Plural.**

“Yes,” Eddie agrees, covering his eyes with his arm and settling back into the couch. “Why?”

**We do not like Christmas, but we could celebrate something else.**

"We could, yeah," Eddie resigns himself to 4 am conversation, "they’ve pretty much all got a religious basis though. What kinda holiday are you thinking?" Eddie had already impressed upon them that religion was a complicated thing that he, as an extremely lapsed Catholic, didn’t want to deal with. It was entirely possible, however, that they've gone on a Hallmark fuelled research binge and if they have he doesn't want to take any of the wind out of their sails.

Venom is quiet for a while, rippling in patterns over the scars on Eddie's chest both from Riot's blade and the surgery he'd had before he even thought of the disastrous story that led to coming to San Francisco. They have complicated feelings about the scars. Eddie had needed to fix himself and they hadn't been there; he'd nearly died and they'd had to choose between speed and perfect restoration when they hadn't been strong enough for both. But the scars also mean that Eddie is tough, is able to take damage and live through it, could survive until they found him. 

Eddie is, for his part, proud of his scars in the same way he is proud of his tattoos. They both tell his story.

They finally respond when Eddie starts thinking about whether or not he should change out of the clothes he'd fallen asleep in.

**A kind one.**

"Yeah?"

**We should celebrate a kind holiday. Are there any like that?**

“They’re all supposed to be.” Eddie sighs. “People just get distracted.”

Venom hums and seeps back under Eddie’s skin. They don’t say anything, apparently not as up for four in the morning discussions as Eddie’d thought. Stretching, Eddie decides that he should at least pretend to be a reasonable human being, change out of his jeans and into some sleep pants, and spend a few hours asleep on his bed and not on the couch.

Eddie’s almost in bed when Venom speaks in the back of his head.

**If they are all supposed to be kind, then maybe we will have our own Christmas. We did not have anything like it, even before half the population was exiled and the other half lost.**

They sweep out and over Eddie like a blanket as he pulls up his covers. The memories tremble at the edge of Eddie’s consciousness and he can’t help but feel the shape of them. Lean times, snapping food from not selves, ripping into the hosts of not selves, being attacked and escaping, abandoning host after host until they were accepted by a new hive that was worse than the last. Safety in numbers, but also misery.

 **That humans, even if they only seek to show off, would provide for others is unthinkable.**

Venom clings to him, their voice in his head almost muted with awe, and he presses a piece of them between his stubbled cheek and the pillow.

**I like the idea of it, Eddie. I want it for us. They would hate it.**

And that’s kind of it isn’t it? They want to separate themselves from what they came from. They see the now bittersweet memories of Christmas with Anne, and they want something like that for themselves. And it doesn’t hurt that they consider the whole thing one giant ‘fuck you’ to Riot and Drake and everyone who’d ever hurt Eddie.

Eddie doesn’t think of all the awkward family times, and doesn’t think of holidays spent with Anne now faded into something worn down and melancholy, and doesn’t think of the grief surrounding last Christmas when he thought Venom was dead. 

Instead he thinks of New Years when the fireworks show on Embarcadero had startled them out of recovery and into a threatening mask over Eddie’s face and hands. He thinks of his birthday and the giant chocolate cake they’d shared. He thinks of running, climbing, leaping through the skyscrapers of downtown the night of Fourth of July, far enough from the fireworks this time that all they felt were shockwaves rippling through their body and pounding against their chest. He thinks of Halloween and the sheer amount of candy Venom had somehow managed to amass. 

And he thinks of Thanksgiving. How they spent it with Annie and Dan and how it had actually been good. How he’d been comfortable with Venom and the people who were somehow still friends with him. How the old, soured memories of his childhood had, for once, not mattered.

“They would.” Eddie agrees after awhile, even if he’s thinking of his own they. “And ‘fuck you’ is a good enough reason for me, anyway.”

**What will we do, Eddie?**

They know the answer already, the idea of their pointed grin spreading across Eddie’s mind; they just want him to say it.

“Whatever we want.” Eddie’s answer is equally toothy, and their contentedness carries them both into sleep.

* * *

They start with lights, partly because Venom likes them and partly because they’re on heavy discount halfway into December.

The amount alone ends up being a little absurd for the size of their apartment, and the strings of light are honestly enough that they don’t even need to use the normal room lights. The insides and outsides of their windows are lit, and the edges of the walls of the open plan kitchen and living room are lined in yet more strings of lights. Venom strings twinkling lights on the ceiling, taking special care with the placement.

 **It is an approximation of the stars seen from the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge,** Venom tells him while they’re in the process of tacking the lights into place. 

Eddie figures that the ceiling lights at least are going to stay up year round since they’re such a pain in the ass to put up. Some of the warm white LEDs they replace with different colored ones to represent certain specific stars. Venom says they are something similar in the wavelengths that they are able to see, and Eddie resolves to spend some time actually paying attention the next time they are Venom at the top of the bridge.

In their bedroom, because they have a separate bedroom now in their new place, they hang dimmer lights than in the rest of the house. Weak single LEDs strung on thin wires and contained in small blobs of plastic instead of bulbs placed around the ceiling fan in a careful pattern. It’s another skyscape, but Venom refuses to tell Eddie anything until it’s done. 

They end where they started, over their bed, and Eddie flops onto his back on top of the covers. Venom shifts out of his shoulder and extends to flick the room lights off and switch the string lights on. The lights are weak enough that they don’t do much other than light the ceiling even with the stupid number of them speckled across the plaster.

"Which sky is this?" The placement is familiar but just different enough for Eddie to recognize that it isn't the same as the living room.

**The view from our apartment, the night we moved in.**

That had been a good night, Eddie recalls as Venom settles themselves in layers across his body. They had taken the day and, in the summer heat, moved all their things three blocks north and one east to the place they live in now. Even with their strength and Eddie's lack of furniture, they’d both been pleasantly tired by the end and satisfied by their work. Though, they hadn’t been too tired to break in the mail order mattress that Eddie’d unpacked at the beginning of the day.

He’d expected awkward questions. Eddie had known that Venom had inhabited multiple hosts, presumably ones who were cisgender. He knew they knew he was trans.

Instead he’d found only acceptance, and, in the afterglow laying on their rumpled sheets, Eddie realized he was comfortable, really actually comfortable, for the first time in a long time.

“S’pretty.” He says as Venom twines around his limbs and traces his muscles. “We like them, brings back good memories.”

Venom rumbles in some sort of agreement or maybe encouragement. They drift over his groin and get just close enough to him to feel them not touching before they ask a wordless question.

Instead of answering Eddie shucks his clothes off, settles into the mattress under the twinkling lights, and welcomes them.

They fuck under their stars and the whole time they’re comfortable.

* * *

They also bake cookies.

Eddie figures it’s as much as they’re gonna do this year since they started so late in the month. But he feels like it’ll be enough, small steps and all that.

So they’re baking, which is something Eddie is actually kind of decent at. He can’t just whip something up, can’t look at a pile of ingredients and come up with a meal, but recipes he can do. It’s a little satisfying, even: you get the butter, sugar, flour, and whatever else, mix it together, bake it, and when you’re done you have something hopefully delicious to eat.

Baking has good associations in Eddie’s memory. He often baked while studying, baked things to give as gifts when he couldn’t really afford to do anything else; even back when he’d been stuck with his father and sister baking had been something he could do and no one would bother him. Memories drift through his thoughts as he gathers the things he needs, and Venom lounges across his shoulders, content in his presence.

The first baked good Eddie plans to make is some sort of almondy buttery bar thing that he found on the internet.

**When do we add the chocolate chips?**

Venom has formed a small head and rested it on Eddie’s shoulder, staring at the pile of bags of chocolate chips. They’re also going to make chocolate chip cookies, standard and double chocolate. Eddie knew himself and Venom well enough to buy almost triple the amount needed in the hopes that enough would survive to be used in the cookies.

“We don’t with this one. This is the almond one we’re making for Anne.” Eddie says, stirring the butter and sugar and egg together.

**Can we?**

Eddie pauses for a moment. Almond and chocolate do go together well if candy bars are anything to go by. And they did buy way more than enough chocolate chips.

“Not this one.” There’s a slight thread of disappointment that Eddie cuts short before it can grow. “If we don’t eat all the extra chips we can probably make a second batch just for us and put them in it.”

**Then we should hurry, Eddie. Before we have a chance to eat too many chocolate chips.**

They stretch tendrils out of the mass that had been comfortably balancing on Eddie’s shoulders to grab the vanilla and almond extract and flour that they can tell are the next steps from the thoughts buzzing around in Eddie’s head. With more precision than they normally bother with they measure out the flavorings and flour and begin folding the flour into the dough.

“If I knew that was all I had to do to get you to help, I would have offered to make you almond chocolate chip cookies sooner.”

**Stop talking and start on the rest of the cookies, Eddie.**

Venom shoves a bowl into Eddie’s waiting hands. Measuring out ingredients according to the recipe Eddie committed to memory years ago, they finish the almond dough while their attention is split.

“Fine, fine! Stop crowding. Give me some elbow room, Bossy!” Eddie grins and starts stirring.

**We are not bossy, we are efficient.**

The cookies are done in record time, and the chocolate chip almond bars are just as delicious as Venom hoped they would be. They don't last long, but they do keep Venom busy as Eddie packs the rest of the cookies to take to Anne and Dan’s house the next day. They’ve invited both of them to dinner, and for once Eddie is looking forward to a holiday meal.

* * *

**Oh. Oh no.**

Venom’s voice rumbles through Eddie’s head in a studiously blank monotone as they walk through their front door after dinner at Anne and Dan’s place.

“What? Did we forget something?” Venom feels like they usually do when they realize Eddie forgot something, but he wasn't sure what it could even be.

**No, Eddie. It is something even worse.**

“What’s even worse?” Eddie asks after Venom doesn’t continue.

**We walked under the mistletoe, Eddie.**

They turn Eddie around until he can see the sprig of plant that is probably mistletoe stapled to the wall above their front door. It is too fresh to have been up for very long.

“What.”

**Eddie we need to kiss. If we do not Christmas will be ruined.**

Finally Venom can’t hold back their amusement. Eddie feels their laughter tapping against the back of his mind.

“So, not that kissing you isn’t a sacrifice I’d gladly make whether or not the fate of Christmas was on the line, but when the hell did you sneak that twig up there?”

**Eddie, that would be telling.**

“It was when we headed out to Anne's place, wasn’t it?” Eddie shuts the door, and Venom emerges from his flank as soon as the latch clicks.

 **“We cannot confirm or deny, but we should kiss before it becomes too late.”** Venom says aloud with as much urgency in their tone as there is laughter in their shared mind. They bump up against Eddie’s chin, encouraging him.

“Then let’s hurry.” Eddie grabs their head in both hands and brings them to his lips.

Venom recovers their initiative and deepens the kiss in ways only they can. Their tongue glides down Eddie’s throat and they light all his nerves up with pleasure that he reflexively sends to them only to feel it refracted back at him twofold. They could spend hours like that, pleasuring each other and passing that pleasure back and forth between them.

Eventually they part, Eddie panting as his body remembers to breathe again now that Venom’s not doing it for him. Venom, for their part, seems somehow looser than normal, shifting with ease around him.

“So did we save Christmas?”

**“Probably.”**

“Only probably?”

**“Yes, the only way to be certain is to ensure you make enough good memories.”**

“Well then,” Eddie says as he strips off his clothes on the way to their bedroom, “let’s save Christmas.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to hit me up on [tumblr](https://bakageta.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are always appreciated!


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